Katja Geiger

Katja of Sweden, Katja Geiger, was born in 1920, and is Sweden’s first internationally known fashion and textile designer. In Sweden, Katja of Sweden is best known for her industrially made and sparsely functional womenswear, often made from jersey, and her beautiful and comfortable shoes. Katja Geiger started studying at Konstfack in 1938, continuing at Beckmans in 1940. She worked in parallel as a fashion sketcher at DN, using the signature Kata. Katja decided to go to the US, where she started at the Parsons School of Design in New York in 1946. She presented her first clothing collection in 1949. The prestigious Lord & Taylor department store bought the collection and a major article in the New York Times made Katja of Sweden an overnight star. She returned to Sweden in the mid-1950s, and established a partnership with MMT, Malmö Mekaniska Tricotfabrik. This lasted for two decades, with MMT sewing the clothes that Katja designed. This was an unusual approach in the Swedish clothing industry at that time, hiring a star designer. A similar relationship was created with shoe manufacturer Gyllene Gripen, lasting until the start of the 1970s. Katja Geiger wanted to make clothes “that meant you could throw yourself into a Bruno Mathsson chair without needing to think about how ‘properly feminine’ you sat, but could just feel comfortable and relaxed.”